Lost and Found
by Julia456
Summary: Prequel to 'Strays'. How hopeless is it when even Superman is on the brink of giving up?
1. Lost

Note: This is a companion story to "Of the Rest of Your Life" and picks up exactly where it left off.

Both fics are prequels to my story "Strays"; you can read them before you read "Strays", although I strongly advise against it, as you'll spoil some big surprises. And that's just no fun at all! : )

Special thanks to Barb for the beta.

--

_"Jewels being lost are found againe, this never,_

_T'is lost but once, and once lost, lost for ever."_

_- Christopher Marlowe_

_--  
_

At five-thirty PM, Lois Lane reached into her purse for a pen.

She was looking for the pen so she could scribble down what her informant on the docks was telling her; he wouldn't let her use her recorder, no matter how long and persuasively she tried to steamroller him.

Eventually she gave in – it was a reasonable demand – and pulled out her notepad. But she couldn't find her pen.

She knew she had one in her purse, so she went fishing. Her fingers closed unexpectedly around a chunky plastic cylinder and she thought, clearly and distinctly, _Oh__**, damn**_.

It was Jason's spare inhaler, which she'd meant to pack with the rest of his things for his weekend with Richard. She'd remembered the shirts, shorts, socks, underwear, toothbrush, toothpaste, and two special toys (action figures this time), along with the vitamins, eyedrops, and assorted other meds.

She'd just forgotten the inhaler.

The informant produced a pen for her while she was standing there, kicking herself over the inhaler. He talked about shipping lines and which freighters would pick up and carry scum like Lex Luthor for the right price, and she wrote it all down so she could cross-check it later against other sources. Including a guy in blue tights who, with any luck, would be home before she was.

Meanwhile, she was thinking hard about the inhaler. It was the spare – Jason had one on him, twenty-four-seven – and he probably wouldn't need it.

In fact, she was positive that he wouldn't need it. Jason hadn't had even a minor asthma attack in over a year, not since that… incident on Luthor's boat.

But still.

Jason might need the inhaler.

She thought of what Richard would say if she left the thing in her purse all weekend. Something caustic and bitter and more than halfway justified, no doubt. Then he'd go tell his lawyer how irresponsible she was.

Lois ended the meeting as soon as possible, thanking her jittery informant and promising, again, not to use his name. By then it was just after six, and she was brimming over with good leads for the never-ending Luthor hunt – which didn't make up for the fact that she now had to tell Richard she'd screwed up. Wonderful.

It was raining, so she waited until she was back in her car before calling Richard's cell.

He didn't answer. Two rings... four rings… six… Voicemail kicked in, and the computer pleasantly and blandly asked her to leave a message.

"It's me," she said, irritated but not surprised that he was ignoring her calls. "Look, I forgot to pack Jason's spare inhaler. I know it's not an emergency, but I'd like him to have it… Just call me back, okay?"

She almost added, _"And tell Jason I love him,"_ but didn't. God only knew how _that _message would be damaged during delivery.

The hell of it was, she reflected as she drove, that she'd genuinely loved Richard. Had and did love him. He was a good man, he was devoted to Jason, and he'd been a rock when she desperately needed one.

But he wasn't Superman. He wasn't Clark Kent.

And there was nothing she could do about that, other than let him see Jason on weekends. Richard was lucky she was letting him do that much, what with that stupid, stupid custody case he was pursuing.

Richard had to understand. He _had_ to. She could not, in _any_ circumstance, let Jason out of her sight. God, even these weekend visits put her nerves on edge.

She turned on the radio and heard breaking news – Superman had rounded up the bad guys behind a spate of bombings in Romania, and was now apparently playing cavalry to some hapless soldiers in Afghanistan.

"Looks like it'll just be me and the leftovers," she muttered, sighing a little.

She checked the clock and toyed with the idea of simply driving out to Richard's apartment and dropping off the damn inhaler. It was six twenty-eight; assuming Richard had picked Jason up on time, they should be in.

Lois called Nancy Johnson, who _did_ answer her phone.

"Hi, Nancy," she said. She didn't actually like Nancy much – they had_ "different mindsets,"_ Clark once said – but for the boys' sake she was willing to fake it. "This is Lois. I just wanted to make sure everything went well with Jason this afternoon."

There was a pause. "About that, Lois," Nancy said, hesitant, and Lois' heart dropped. "Well… I don't know how to say this. Kevin isn't going to be able to play with Jason anymore."

"What? Why?" That didn't sound like trouble with Richard, but rather another problem altogether. _Please don't say he threw a piano_, she prayed, mentally crossing her fingers.

"Well, he broke one of Kevin's video game controllers. Crushed it – he must have been _stomping_ on it, it's just destroyed. And some other things that I didn't find until just now. Kevin is very upset."

"Oh," Lois said, tastefully omitting the four-letter word she wanted to add. "I'm… so sorry."

Another pause. "Have you… I don't mean to sound nosey… Have you considered counseling? I mean, given the… situation. Between you and – Jason's father."

"_Oh_," Lois said. "_That_. Yes. Yes, definitely, we're considering it. Nancy, what time did Richard get there?"

"Five o'clock to the minute," Nancy said. "It's just that acting out is usually the first sign of deeper problems –"

"And everything seemed all right?"

"What? Yes. But Lois, I've heard from the other moms that there's been trouble in school, too –"

"Thanks, Nancy, I'll talk to you later," Lois said, effortlessly overriding her, and ended the call. She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and started navigating her way to Richard's apartment.

Traffic wasn't too bad and she pulled into the parking lot at a little after seven-thirty. She called Richard's cell again, hoping to avoid running through the rain to the door, then disentangling herself from Jason one more painful time.

The phone rang until voicemail picked up.

Lois ended the call without leaving a message.

It didn't look as though the lights were on in Richard's apartment. She drummed her fingers on the wheel for a moment, thinking, then turned off the engine, slung her purse over her shoulder, climbed out, and hurried through the rain.

When knocking, and then banging, on the door didn't produce a response, she dug a credit card out of her purse and let herself in.

The lights weren't on. There was no sign of Jason, and it didn't feel like anyone had been in the apartment recently. She cautiously checked all the rooms, half-expecting Richard to appear and demand to know what she was doing, dripping water all over his floors. But she found nothing.

Unease twisted around her gut – the professional instinct of an investigative reporter that something very bad was going on.

She returned to the parking lot and, disregarding the rain, carefully looked around for Richard's car.

It wasn't there.

What the hell was going on? Where _were_ they? God, what if there'd been an accident? What if Jason had been hurt? What if – but no. There was no way Richard would be crazy enough to...

But that custody case…

Back in her car. She called Clark's cell and got no answer, but she knew where _he_ was – still off fighting someone else's war, and he'd probably left the phone with his clothes anyway.

Frustrated and worried and unable to let it drop, she decided to backtrack along the route Richard had most likely taken once he'd left the birthday party.

The rain had slowed down to a steady mist, but it was now eight o'clock and fully dark. She drove slowly enough to earn annoyed honks from the people behind her, which she ignored in favor of scanning the shoulders for any sign of Richard or Jason.

As she went through a particularly deserted stretch of road – just an office building and a bunch of trees – a flash of color in the grass across the way was lit by passing headlights and caught her attention. Her brain registered it automatically, before she really even processed it, as Jason's backpack.

Her heart kicked in her chest. She slammed on the brakes and made an illegal U-turn right there, earning more furious honking, then pulled off into the grass behind the backpack.

She was looking for her son even as she climbed out of the car and hurried to the backpack. Yes, it was Jason's – shiny red with a big blue airplane – and when she picked it up she saw his overnight bag lying some distance away. On its side, carelessly tossed down, toys and clothes spilling partway out.

Forget the unease, forget the adrenaline spike: Now real fear grabbed at her soul and dug its talons in deep, stealing her breath away.

Jason's things, abandoned by the side of the road.

No answer from Richard.

No one where they should be.

She clutched the backpack close to her chest and screamed, as loudly as she could, for Superman.


	2. Interlude: Observation

_By the time they get to the Gotham City safehouse, three hours into the operation, and start unloading the van, the dose of kryptonite is wearing off. The kid struggles as they take him inside. He makes a break for it and almost succeeds; he run down the length of the alley towards the street, sneakered feet slapping on the pavement. _

_They have to catch him and haul him back, but he fights the entire time and nearly fractures multiple bones in his captors' bodies._

_So they give him another shot of the kryptonite, even though they're still in the alley, even though it's nowhere near the scheduled time for another dose, and he wilts into dazed submission again._

_It's quickly and quietly done. Professional. These men are highly trained agents – the elite of their small peer group. They're not going to be intimidated by a stubborn kid, no matter who his father is. They pick him up and carry him inside._

_No one witnesses any of it… except for a young woman on the lookout for cops and bats while her friend, her mentor, her idol, prepares to rob a rich man's house._

_This young woman has a bad reaction to scenes of child abuse. _

_Holly Robinson's fingers tighten around her night-vision binoculars until the plastic creaks under the strain. She remembers the beatings she took, physical and emotional, from parents, boyfriends, pimps, dealers. Remembers being small and helpless and a victimized object._

_She's free of all that now, and proud of the fact that she's changing her life. That she's taking control of her own destiny. That she's going to be someone powerful and important one day.  
_

_But seeing six men overwhelm a frightened little boy brings the dark hot anger right up to the surface again. It boils under her skin, fierce and hungry for blood. For justice.  
_

_She wants to go down there and kick __**them**__ around, jab needles into __**their**__ necks – but instead she keeps an eye on them, waiting until the time when Selina is finished._

_Then they'll see._


	3. Nowhere

The first thing Superman did was tell Lois that it would be all right.

The second thing he did was tell her to call the police.

The third thing he did was leave her standing there, in the wet dark grass beside the road, and start searching for their son.

He was naturally concerned; what father wouldn't be? But he wasn't worried. He was confident that he could find Jason and Richard, who had apparently disappeared together, because it only three hours had passed since they'd been seen in Metropolis.

Three hours of travel time left a generous search area, especially if they had been traveling by plane. Generous by most standards, but not by his: It totalled only a few thousand square miles.

Inside that area, of course, were multiple major cities with populations in the tens of millions - Boston, New York, Gotham, Philadelphia, Washington, and so on. He would be looking – or rather listening – for evidence of a single child in the middle of one of America's most densely populated regions.

The term "needle in a haystack" didn't even come close.

And while he'd searched through plenty of haystacks in his earlier life (there were only so many ways a farm kid with x-ray vision could stay busy), this hunt had potentially devastating stakes.

However, he knew Jason's heartbeat and vocal frequency as well as he knew his own, or Lois', or his mother's, and he knew he could find Jason. He expected it to take only a few minutes. Asking Lois to notify the Metropolis police was really only a courtesy to the department.

He went up to approximately 160,000 feet, where the atmosphere thinned out to unbreathable parts-per-million and he was only endangering certain spy planes. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

Sounds filtered in and out in their usual cacophony – the amazingly, gloriously chaotic static of human existence. Shouts, sirens, alarms, arguments, laughter, machines running, guns firing, engines droning, electricity crackling across a hundred million lines of conductivity, a thousand kinds of music blaring from thousands of speakers, phones ringing, dogs barking, babies crying, car tires running over pavement…

He frowned, flew lower, and concentrated harder, but after a few minutes he had to admit the truth.

He wasn't hearing his son's voice… anywhere.

That could mean Jason was underground, or in some kind of soundproofed facility. It could mean that he was asleep; he'd had a long exciting day, and it was after eight o'clock now.

And it could also mean –

Superman opened his eyes.

No.

No, that wasn't a possibility to consider. Jason was with Richard, and Richard, for all the needless heartache he'd been putting Lois through lately, wasn't going to let anything happen to Jason.

He decided to do a visual search as well, which would mean flying to each city and over the roads in between. That would take time, and every second offered the potential for Jason and Richard to move farther away or go deeper into hiding.

Still, it was the logical step. He didn't want to jump to conclusions.

He dropped down to cloud level and chose, somewhat at random, Gotham City as his starting point. He flew along the interstate, keeping one eye out for commercial and private aircraft, looking for Richard's car. He did several passes over the city, each time coming up with nothing.

He moved on to New York. Then the other cities. Every minute of failure increased the hollow, twisting ache in his chest.

Where was Jason?

Why couldn't he _find_ him?

He stopped. He forced himself to stop. Forced himself to just stop and breathe for a moment.

_Helplessness_ was not a feeling Superman experienced often. The crushing mix of helplessness and violation that he felt as his search spiraled onward, rolling along with the inexorable rotation of the earth – that particular sensation he'd only felt twice before.

Once, soon after his return, when he'd visited the Fortress and discovered that Lex Luthor had stolen the crystals there.

And once, many years before that, when Jonathan Kent's heart had failed and Clark's father had died right there in front of him, in the middle of a dusty Kansas barnyard.

It was such a _human_ rush of emotion – helplessness and violation and loss and terror and anger – that it came closer to paralyzing him than anything else in the universe.

_**You cannot serve humanity by investing your time and emotion in one human being at the expense of the rest**_, Jor-El said in memory._** The concepts are mutually exclusive.**_

Yes: Serve the greater good. Protect humanity.

Exactly as he'd been doing three hours ago. While his son and a good, worthy man were vanishing from the face of the earth, he'd been half a world away, protecting strangers.

Guilt was a bitter taste, and worse than helplessness.

He went back to Metropolis, he told himself, to check on Lois and talk to the police.


	4. Interlude: Removal

_The woman holds her fingers stiffly spread and turns her hand in a slow circle, cutting the glass with the claws built into her gloves. It makes a faint squealing noise – much too faint for anyone to hear. _

_So she's surprised when a little palm is pressed to the window and a little pale face appears beyond it. Her free hand jerks back, claws scoring into the bricks around the window. Then she realizes there's no danger and laughs silently at herself._

_She puts a finger to her lips, miming __**shhh**__. The boy nods and stumbles back to the far corner of the room. He trips, sits-falls-collapses down onto a blanket and curls up, shivering. _

_He doesn't look good, she thinks. He's too pale, too glazed, too uncoordinated. Even in the dark, even from across the room, she can see the glistening of fever sweat on him. _

_She removes the circle of glass, slips her hand inside, and opens the lock. The boy doesn't move as she pushes up the sash and climbs noiselessly through, and she knows that particular boneless loll means he's lost consciousness._

_There's a chunk of rock duct-taped to the wall below the window. She peels it free, holds it to the light, sees the dull green sheen of its facets. _

_She's something of an expert on shiny rocks, and this one makes her look twice in surprise. It can't possibly be what she thinks it is, but she's not going to take any chances. She unzips the front of her suit just far enough to stick the rock inside the hidden pocket there, then zips it closed again._

_She crouches down beside the boy and gathers him up in a careful fireman's carry. Back through the window, moving with precision and delicacy – the first time she's ever stolen a kid – and as she's letting herself down her rappel line she hears the door open in the room she just vacated._

_She moves faster, but not faster than the bullets. One scores a firecracker line of pain across her arm._

_**Oh, no. Absolutely not**__, she thinks, dropping the last few feet and sprinting for Holly and the waiting van, small body dragging at her shoulder. She is highly uninterested in being shot at._

_This kid is going to become someone else's problem – the sooner the better._

_And she knows just the right babysitter._


	5. Bitter

"I don't think you're hearing me," Lois said, anger infusing her words and making her fingers tighten. She gave the police officer a deadly glare. "Richard would _never_ hurt Jason. _Never_."

It was well after eleven o'clock and Lois was ready to kill. She had nothing to show for six hours of agonizing fear except these two cops, sitting on her couch, telling her she didn't know what she was talking about.

"Ma'am, I'm sure Mr. White wouldn't, under ordinary circumstances," Captain Maggie Sawyer said with exaggerated patience, making Lois bristle. "But in most cases like these –"

"It's _not_ a parent abduction!" Lois exclaimed. Jesus Christ – what good was pulling strings and getting the Special Crimes Unit involved if they were all morons? At least they'd agreed not to run out and plaster Jason's photo on every lamppost and news feed in America; she wanted people looking, yes, but Superman was already doing that, and she had more faith in him than an Amber Alert. "That's what I'm trying to tell you! Somebody else is involved here, and _both_ Richard and Jason are in danger!"

Captain Sawyer waited her out, then said, "Okay, Ms. Lane. Who else would you suggest we look at?"

She didn't actually have anyone else in mind, and she opened and shut her mouth like an idiot for a moment. "Lex Luthor," she finally said, picking the first name that came to her. "I'm doing a story on Lex Luthor. Someone may have heard, and thought… that if they…"

She had to stop then, because - _dammit!_ - she was beginning to cry.

Sawyer motioned to the plainclothes detective with her, who left the room and returned in short order with a box of Kleenex. His phone shrilled and he handed the box to Sawyer, then pulled out the phone and walked away to answer it. "Turpin. Go ahead."

Captain Sawyer gave Lois the Kleenex. "Ms. Lane, have you received any phone calls or notes? Not necessarily for ransom demands. Anything threatening or unusual at all?"

"No," she said, taking one of the tissues and pulling herself together. She'd decided, after Superman left, that she was not, absolutely _not,_ going to succumb to the fear and panic.

If you were falling off a building (and God knew she'd done _that_ before), you didn't waste time thinking about how much the impact was going to hurt. You didn't waste time crossing your fingers that someone would pluck you out of thin air. You tried to save yourself. You found something to grab onto.

So she was grabbing onto something. An investigation. These cops could say it was a parent abduction as many times as they wanted; she _knew_ there was something bigger and uglier going on. She was going to find out what, and in so doing, she was going to make sure that Richard and her son came back safely.

Besides, for all she knew, Superman had already found them. For all she knew, they were all on their way home right –

The front door opened and everyone in the apartment – Lois, Sawyer, and the detective (still on the phone, scribbling something down on a piece of paper) – turned to look.

It was Clark. Wide-eyed, out of breath, clothes rumpled.

Alone.

Lois felt her heart sink even further.

"I'm sorry," he said, crossing the room to sit beside her. He put his arms around her and she could feel the frustration and fear radiating from him. "Oh, Lois, I'm so sorry. I should've been there."

She murmured something like _It's okay_, although it wasn't, and hugged him back. She wanted to get some details out of him (where did he look? why did he stop looking so soon?), but of course that would have to wait.

Captain Sawyer introduced herself and the detective, Clark explained who he was, Sawyer asked him about Richard and if he could think of anyone else who might have abducted Jason.

Clark's jaw flexed; that was Superman, trying to hide secrets without lying. He hemmed and hawed: "Well – no – I mean… Lois has been working on a story about Lex Luthor…"

"He's dead, isn't he?" the detective interrupted, looking and sounding skeptical, but politely covering the mouthpiece of his phone. "Crashed his helicopter on some island is what I heard."

"Uh… I don't think they ever, uh, that Superman ever found his body."

Thinking about finding bodies – worse, about not finding bodies – and the sheer amount of danger Jason might be in right at that moment, Lois almost started crying again.

Instead, she grabbed on. She pulled out her notepad and a pen, resolutely turned to a fresh page, and tried to make a list of people who might be crazy enough to steal her son. LEX LUTHOR was at the top, underlined. Dead or not, she had a gut instinct that she needed to look in his direction.

"Okay, thanks. I'll tell her now." The detective ended his call and said, "Search team turned up a note. Not much of a note, but they bagged it for evidence."

Sawyer shot him a startled, displeased look and glanced pointedly at Lois and Clark. "About this case?"

The detective showed Sawyer what he'd written.

The police captain's face set. "Ms. Lane," she said, in a blank and final tone. "You and Mr. Kent are welcome to make any contributions that you can to this case. However, at this time, we're going to continue to focus our investigation on your ex-fiancé."

"Why?" Lois asked, freshly alarmed. She made a grab for the paper, but Captain Sawyer moved it out of range. "What did it say? I have a right to know!"

"Right now we need to –"

Somehow, without appearing to try, Clark wound up with the paper in his hand. He looked at it, frowning, then handed it to Lois, despite Sawyer's visible displeasure.

The detective had terrible handwriting and it took Lois a moment to decipher the message.

Then she wished she hadn't: The hatred that blazed from each short, simple word burned itself into her chest, stealing her breath away.

_**You don't deserve him.  
You never did.  
I hope you said goodbye.**_

"Richard didn't write this," Lois said immediately. She crunched it up into a little spiteful ball and demanded of the detective, "It was typed, wasn't it? Because _he didn't write it!_ Whoever took them - they planted this."

"It's certainly a theory that we'll consider. But you understand," Sawyer said, with a mix of sympathy and pity that made Lois want to attack, "that we have to assume otherwise."

"You're going to chase after fairy tales while my son is in danger?" she exclaimed, rising to her feet. Her voice rose, too, but that was a relief. It was a relief to have someone to shout at, finally, a chance to release the fear and anger and the pain that was ripping great chunks out of her heart and soul. She wanted to scream until her voice was raw. She settled for yelling at the police: "Have you heard _a single word_? Have you been listening _at all_? Richard _did not do this!_"

"They're just trying to help, Lois," Clark said, putting a hand on her arm, trying to pull her down, trying to calm her down. She refused to budge.

"We don't need _that kind_ of help," she said to him, without taking her attention off of Sawyer. "We'll help ourselves."

Captain Sawyer, damn her, stood, collected her detective, and said only, with pity and sympathy, "We'll keep you updated."


	6. Interlude: Deposit

_He doesn't feel good._

_He just wants to close his eyes and go to sleep. But the lady is shaking him awake. She's nice – she came to that room, and… she must have taken him out, because he's not there anymore… but he doesn't remember leaving._

_He tries hard to keep his eyes open. He feels sick all over. He just wants to go to sleep._

_"Come on," the lady says. The words sound blurry and dull, like she's underwater, or maybe he is. "You're going to make a new friend."_

_She picks him up, holding him like a baby. He's not a baby. He's too big to be carried. But she smells nice and he wants someone to hold him because he doesn't feel good. _

_He sees they're somewhere dark and dirty-looking. In the city. He knows cities. He lives in a big one. Doesn't he? Everything in his head is all fuzzy and gray. He lives somewhere. He has a mommy… he… he has... has a d…_

_From far away, like an underwater echo, he hears someone yelling __**"No! You can't –"**__ and his stomach feels really bad. _

_"Careful, kid - this is dry-clean only," the lady says. She puts him down again inside a car that's all torn up. He curls into a ball around the pain. She talks to her friend, the one with the funny orange hair and the cats. He watches the lady until his eyes close. _

_She's nice. He likes her purple suit. He likes the little round cat ears on top. _

_He wants to go to sleep but he doesn't feel good, so he can't._

_The lady goes away and the friend comes and sits by him inside the car. She has long yellow hair now, not funny short orange hair. He doesn't think why. Maybe he's at home and having a dream. Maybe he ate something he's allergic to and got sick and he's in the hospital again. Someone... Kevin had cupcakes... and he was there... did he eat one on accident?  
_

_The lady's friend strokes his hair and whispers, "We gotta be really quiet, okay?"_

_He closes his eyes and wishes he didn't feel so sick. His whole body feels sick, way down deep inside. In his blood and stuff. He hurts all over._

_He wants his mommy._

_He doesn't want to feel sick anymore._

_He doesn't want to be here._

_He just wants to go to sleep...  
_


	7. Self Inflicted

Three days.

Three days with no sign of Jason or Richard.

Superman kept looking, dividing his time as best he could between the search and his responsibilities to the rest of the world. He would never stop looking until they came home. Not ever.

He would find them. Somehow.

He _would _find his son.

But then... On his way home to Metropolis after another unproductive hunt, he paused. A little more than three hundred miles out from the city, in the middle of a state park, rangers and state troopers were sifting through the remains of a burnt-out car, looking for further evidence.

He recognized the car.

He recognized the charred bones that the cops had found inside the car.

He felt guilty for being glad that there was only one set of remains, and that they weren't a child's.

He landed and asked the troopers if anyone had notified Richard White's next of kin, and was told that they had.

He asked if anyone had notified Lois Lane.

The troopers didn't know that, but he thought that the answer was yes. He felt more guilt on top of everything else, for not being present when she needed him.

Again.

Home once more, he learned that Lois' search had been more successful.

Lois, red-eyed and grim, had been working the phones and calling in favors for the last two days, and she had found a series of private and chartered flights in and out of the city that seemed suspiciously timed. The discovery of Richard's murder had finally persuaded the SCU that she had been on the right track all along - they could hardly dispute it now - and they agreed to back her theory.

Lois had just gone with the police to the airport to arrest two men who had been on one of those suspect flights, and Lois had taken a blow to the head in the process.

She met him at the central precinct, butterfly bandage on her forehead and icepack going unused in her hand, and said tonelessly, "Richard's dead. They killed him."

"I know. Are you all right?" he asked. He was still in the suit or he would've done more than simply ask. He would've put an arm around her, kissed her – but he couldn't do that. It wasn't safe.

_Why? Who are you protecting?_ he wondered in a corner of his mind. Jason had already been kidnapped. There wasn't much more damage that revealing his secret identity could do.

"Fine. I'm fine. Just get those bastards to talk," she said. She touched the ice to her head and winced, but the spark started blazing in her eyes again. "It's them. I _know_ it is."

He didn't like Lois putting herself in danger, but he accepted that she was an adult and could make her own choices (however stubborn and headstrong they might be), and to be perfectly honest, there was a small part of him that had enjoyed rescuing her.

But Jason was a different story.

Jason was a child.

Jason was his son.

_His son_.

A miracle. A humbling, impossible blessing: One further scion of the House of El, one further addendum to the Kent family Bible.

And now Jason had vanished, and Superman was helpless.

He kept thinking of something Jor-El had told him once, a long time ago – a lifetime ago – about the need for secrecy. _**Your enemies will discover that the only way to hurt you will be by hurting the people you care for, **_his father had said.

Superman hoped that Richard had been killed and Jason kidnapped because of Lois's work. It would be an awful thing, but much better, in terms of Jason's eventual fate, than if he'd been taken because of his paternity. That he was looking at things in terms of finding the lesser evil was, he thought, an evil in and of itself.

"We've got nothing," Captain Sawyer told him a few moments later, audibly frustrated, hands on hips, glaring at the monitors showing the two men in their separate interview rooms. "The passports are fake as hell – but that's a federal thing. I agree with Ms. Lane, chances are they're good for the kidnapping. But they're not talking."

Superman asked, carefully neutral, "Do you mind if I try, Captain?" He didn't work very closely with the police, even the Special Crimes Unit, and he didn't want to step on any toes. At the same time, he wasn't going to leave without seeing these men.

Sawyer shook her head. "Have at it. But I'm going in there with you."

He accepted that as only reasonable, although what he wanted wasn't reasonable. What he wanted was to smash through the wall and grab the men, fly them up to ten thousand feet, and see if they felt like talking _then_.

But that would be an abuse of power. He was here to help people, not terrorize them.

No matter what was at stake.

He followed Sawyer to one of the interview rooms. She paused with her hand on the door and cleared her throat. "If I can ask, Superman - what's your interest in this case? We've got lots of missing kids and dead parents in this city. What makes this one so special?"

It was a valid question. He tried to frame his answer in a way that would satisfy an investigator without compromising the truth. "I'm the last survivor of my planet," he said after a moment. "Ms. Lane… and her family… are important to me."

Sawyer made a _Mm_ noise and seemed to accept his answer. She opened the door to the interview room.

"Jan Kovacs" (it was "John Smith" in Hungarian) was slouched casually in one of the two chairs. He glanced up when they entered, apparently unconcerned, but his heart rate and respiration accelerated fractionally.

Sawyer took a seat and mirrored Kovacs's posture, leaning back in her chair as if she didn't have a care in the world. Superman chose to stand behind her, arms crossed over his chest.

"Hello again, Johnny. You know, you might want to rethink your level of cooperation," Sawyer said to the man, gesturing loosely in Superman's direction. "I'm sorry to say I can no longer guarantee your safety."

Kovacs looked at Superman, who looked back, letting the edges of his anger show, letting his eyes glow red in the harsh fluorescent light overhead. Kovacs's pulse was still elevated, but not unduly; a little smirk played around the corners of his mouth. Superman judged him as being genuinely unconcerned, and that made him angrier.

"What am I being charged with?" he asked. He had a French accent despite his Hungarian name and passport. And he held himself like a fighter – not a street brawler, but a professional. A mercenary.

"You want to play that game?" Sawyer asked, her blonde eyebrows hiking up in mimed surprise. "You don't want to play that game. If you play that game I'll have to call my friends at Homeland Security and tell them to take a good _hard_ look at that passport." She half-turned to Superman. "What's Gitmo like this time of year?"

Kovacs seemed amused. He shifted in his chair, settling into a more comfortable position. "I would like a lawyer."

"Okay," Sawyer said, slapping her hands on the table. "I'll go call Homeland Security. Hope you like Cuban sandwiches."

She stood and said, "Keep an eye on Johnny, please, Superman," on her way out.

The door locked.

Superman and Kovacs regarded each other silently.

After a moment, the light on the monitoring camera blinked off.

Superman sat down in the chair Captain Sawyer had just vacated, shifting his cape out of the way without thinking about it. He folded his hands on top of the table and met Kovacs's eyes.

"Mr. Kovacs, I can't arrest you," Superman said with a neutrality he most certainly didn't feel. "What you tell me now can't be used by the police. Please be honest; there are lives at stake. Did you kill Richard White?"

Kovacs said nothing, still leaning casually in his chair, still projecting amusement. His breathing remained steady; his heart sped up momentarily, then slowed.

A yes.

"Did you," Superman asked, "kidnap Jason White?"

A shift in respiration, an increased pulse. Kovacs stared straight at him, smirking, but his pupils constricted. "I don't know who that is."

Lying.

"I'm a law-abiding man, Mr. Kovacs," Superman said, seriously and patiently. "My parents raised me to respect the rules, even when – especially when – it seems better not to."

Kovacs's smirk widened.

_**Your enemies will discover that the only way to hurt you will be by hurting the people you care for.**_

"And my parents were right."

"Wonderful," Kovacs said, dry.

Superman said, still serious, still neutral, "It's important for you to know that. I want you to understand what it means when I say that I'm considering breaking every bone in your body."

The smirk vanished, replaced by a cold and unflinching mask that betrayed nothing. But Kovacs's pulse skyrocketed, and he began to sweat.

Fear, for the first time.

"I'll ask again. Did you kidnap Jason White?"

"I don't know who that is."

Lying.

Too quickly for the human eye to follow, Superman had Kovacs out of his chair and dangling by his shirtfront.

"Where is he?"

The mask of indifference slipped, briefly, into panic. "I don't know! I want my lawyer!"

Lying.

"Where _is he_?"

Kovacs' heart was triphammering, but the cold, blank expression resettled itself onto his face. They held that pose for a moment longer – Kovacs hanging by the neck of his shirt, inches from Superman's glowing red eyes – and then the man started to laugh. It was a low, mocking chuckle, calculated to push buttons.

Superman tightened his grip.

Kovacs made a choking noise, but the chuckling continued around it. "Only one way," he rasped, "to find out… If you deserve him. _Superman_."

Not lying.

_You don't deserve him.  
You never did.  
I hope you said goodbye.  
_

Superman flexed the muscles of his arm, very slightly, and flung Kovacs into the wall.

The drywall cracked. So did bones.

Kovacs collapsed to the floor, breath rattling in his shocked lungs, highly trained reflexes scrambled by the velocity and force of the impact. His skull had a fracture line along the posterior parietal bone; several ribs had similar damage; and there were muscle tears around the neck – whiplash.

Outside someone said, "_Shit, Sawyer - his lawyer'll have our heads!_"

"_It's all self-inflicted_," Sawyer said coolly. "_He's attempting suicide._"

Superman picked him up by the collar again, twisting the cloth, letting the toes of his shoes scrape against the floor. This time, Kovacs' hands came up and made an impossible attempt to pry loose.

Only one way.

Despite the haze of anger – or maybe because of it – Superman saw very clearly what that way was.

"_**Suicide**?_"

_"What would **you** call pissing off Superman?"_

He wanted to do it. He could feel the shirt fabric tearing, grinding, crushing beneath his fingers, and he knew that if it was this criminal's flesh and bone instead that he would get all of the answers.

"Do you deserve this?" he demanded. Kovacs coughed and his fingers scrabbled uselessly. "Does _Jason_ deserve what you've done to him?"

Kovacs gasped, "I... don't..."

Lying.

Superman wanted to do it.

But it was a line that he couldn't cross.

Even for this. Even for the sake of his son.

Did that make him strong… or fatally weak?

Heartsick, angry, he dropped Kovacs into the chair; the landing tipped it back on one leg and it spilled the man onto the floor. Kovacs took the fall and stayed down, watching him with wary belligerence.

Silence returned to the room, broken only by Kovacs' scratched breathing. Superman stared him down, but the man didn't flinch, didn't look away.

"I'm going to find him," Superman said finally. "That's inevitable. But I can no longer guarantee the safety of the people involved in this crime." He turned to go, then paused to add, over his shoulder, "Make sure your friends know."


	8. Interlude: Conversation

_Sawyer dials the number for her GCPD counterpart and is startled when the phone's answered by a woman saying, "Major Crimes, this is Essen."_

_"This is Maggie Sawyer," she says after a moment of recovery. "With Special Crimes, in Metropolis. I'm sorry – I was expecting Jim Gordon."_

_"No, he was kicked upstairs a few months ago," Essen says. "Commissioner. It's my unit now."_

_"I knew that, I just… I guess you're never too young for Alzheimer's."_

_Essen makes a noise of agreement and amusement. "Comes free with the job."_

_"Isn't that the truth. Look, Essen, I'm calling to give you a heads-up on a fax that we're sending. Six-year-old white male went missing four days ago with his father, father's turned up deceased – homicide – we need to find the kid. You know Lois Lane, the reporter?" _

_"Oh, the Superman reporter. Yeah. Good writer."_

_"Uh-huh. It's her kid. So we're under some pressure here." Sawyer is under more pressure now, ever since she let Superman smack one of their chief suspects around. Hell with it - it was a calculated risk and the guy deserved it anyway. She's a captain; they'll need a lot more than one roughed-up bastard to bust her ass. "Now it might be tied in to a story she's working on. Info's all on the sheet."_

_Essen says, warning, "If the story's to do with organized crime, this city is still a black hole as far as that. Even for six-year-old kids."_

_"I know, and it's been migrating our way since your bat population went up." Sawyer pauses, trying to think of a tactful way to word it. "Speaking of. SCU would really appreciate it if you guys could keep a low profile on this one."_

_"Mm. Keep our bats to ourselves, in other words." Essen doesn't sound offended. "You know – I don't want to get your hopes up – but Gordon was down here the day before yesterday, asking for all the open reports on missing children. Um… yes, specifically boys, four to six."_

_"__**Really**__," Sawyer says, and sits up a little straighter. "Has he heard something?"_

_"Hard to say. I'll run the fax by him before he leaves today, how does that sound?"_

_"That'd be great. Thanks."_

_"Anytime," Essen says, and hangs up._


	9. Breaking News

Five days.

Lois was still holding on, but despite all of her best efforts, her fingers were starting to slip. Every time she thought of Jason, the pain flashed up from nowhere and took her breath away, every inch as hot and raw and huge as the first moment she realized he was gone.

The sensation of crumbling hope had not improved when she stood in front of her closet yesterday, trying to choose her clothes for Richard's upcoming funeral, and realized she might need them again for her son's.

And it had certainly not improved when the SCU went public with the entire sordid story – what they knew of it, anyway.

Captain Sawyer, to her credit, had been just as reluctant as Lois to spread the news around. But as the cop had pointed out, Richard's murder changed the game. They were now looking for a killer, and they needed to enlist some help.

Perry had run the story. Apologized to her ("It's business, Lois, God knows it doesn't make me happy" – as if _he_ needed to apologize to _her_ over the death of his nephew), and then run it on the front page. Below the fold, at least, and with a minimum of sensationalism.

She had the morning edition laid out on her desk, and it was pissing her off beyond all reasonable expectations.

She didn't like seeing her name in the paper when it wasn't in a byline.

She didn't like glancing over at Richard's old office and being smacked with the truth of his awful, senseless death – _oh, God, Richard_ – all over again, every time.

She didn't like people stopping by her desk with pity and sympathy and more than a little ghoulish fascination. This wasn't a train wreck, dammit; she didn't deserve to be gawked at. If they wanted to make her feel better, they could find her son. The entire reason she was at the Planet was to get more work done, but the opposite was happening. It wasn't fostering good relations with her coworkers.

"I'm _working_," she said to the person coming up behind her now. She was busy; she was trying to further trace the origins of "Jan Kovacs" and "Hanke Schmidt", who had yet to say more than _"I want my lawyer"_ and _"what are you talking about?"_, even to Superman. Even to a very angry Superman.

But it was only Jimmy, looking embarrassed and slightly scared. "Uh, the Chief wants to see Mr. Kent…?"

"He's out." In and out, more precisely. She was keeping track of him via his sporadic appearances on the news channels.

"Oh," Jimmy said. He glanced around, shuffled his feet, and asked, "Um… are you… okay, Ms. Lane?"

"No," she said, being honest. She looked like hell, she felt like hell, and she had stopped caring about everything except finding Jason and making sure someone was brought to justice. "But don't worry about me. Worry about the bastards that did this."

The scared look returned. "Oh. Is Superman, um, helping?"

"Yeah." He was helping so much that she'd hardly seen Clark over the last few days – and that was a shame, because she could've used the reassurance. This was a hard, hard thing to try to bear alone: She was grabbing at desperate straws and he was vacillating between anger and despair, and they were both trying, and failing, to hide their fractures from each other. "It's a big planet, Jimmy, even for him."

Jimmy nodded, then excused himself and left. That would be the next stage, Lois thought; she'd become an unwelcome reminder of tragedy, someone to be avoided lest the conversation have to turn, again, to something depressing. Train wreck today, pariah tomorrow.

But only if she didn't find who was behind Jason's disappearance. She kept looking, calling, and cross-checking, and noticed, after a few hours, that some of the names popping up sounded familiar. Referencing her notes, she discovered that they were familiar because she'd just encountered them in her fruitless hunt for Lex Luthor.

"Son of a _bitch!_" she exclaimed, instantly furious.

Her nearest coworkers looked at her, startled, but she ignored them.

Of course – Luthor was alive and going after Jason _because he knew_.

She was surprised to find she was crying, warm water on her face. She wiped away the tears as fast as she could. She tried to call Clark, got no answer (news check: Superman was in South Africa), and instead threw herself into the hunt more aggressively.

But her initial elation fizzled out: There were just no leads.

She could build a chain of plausible conjecture, but the core problem remained. There was still no evidence – no photos, no signatures, no rumors, nothing – that Luthor had even survived the New Krypton disaster in the first place.

At five o'clock, Lois was brooding over it, trying to figure out another angle of attack, when Clark came in. His tie was askew, hair windblown, shoulders slumped, and he leaned in close to tell her more bad news. He had just finished rechecking the south Atlantic (every square inch of it) and there was no sign of Jason.

Lois told him about the possible Luthor connection, which didn't improve his mood.

"This is only getting worse," he said, troubled enough to actually take off his glasses in the middle of the bullpen and rub at his face. "I – Superman hasn't been able to find Luthor in over a year." He took a breath and let it out. "I don't know if he can. I don't know if… it's even possible."

She found herself nodding even though, inwardly, she was screaming _**No, no, no!**_ Oh, God, how hopeless was it when _Superman_ was standing on the brink of giving up?

She felt a wave of anger towards him, but knew enough to recognize that it was only because he was right. It might _not_ be possible. If it wasn't -

_No. Don't fall. Hold on to something_, she told herself.

"Keep looking," she whispered fiercely. She grabbed his hand and squeezed as tightly as she could. Holding on. "Don't stop. You'll find him."

He looked surprised, but closed his eyes and exhaled. His fingers tightened against hers, warm and gentle.

Holding on.

"I'm going out to the West Coast again – I heard something out there that might be connected to this. Then I'll start looking for Luthor. Call me if anything changes."

"Cell phone," she said firmly. "Not the traditional way."

"You know, there's really no place to…" He gestured discreetly at his waist.

"Find one," she ordered. He exhaled again and nodded, a ghost of a smile flickering. She couldn't find the wherewithal to drag up one of her own.

Clark left, and a few minutes later, the news channels blaring from the bullpen TVs began reporting Superman sightings in Los Angeles.

After an hour or so, Perry emerged from his office long enough to bark, "Eat something, Lane!" before he himself disappeared with only a cup of coffee for dinner.

She stared at her computer for a few more minutes, then gathered up her purse to make a good show. She'd probably take the elevator up to the roof instead. Be miserable and worried up there for a change.

Her cell phone rang.

She fumbled around in her bag and got it on the third ring. "Hello?"

An unfamiliar man's voice said, "Is this Lois Lane?"

He sounded like someone's grandfather, steady and sympathetic. It was the sympathy that frightened her.

"Yes," she said cautiously, sick of bad news. "Who's this?"

There was a pause. She could hear, very faintly, traffic noises in the background of the connection.

"Your son is in Gotham City," the man said.

"_Who is this_?"

"Gotham. The Park Row Clinic." He gave an address and hung up.

Lois listened to the dial tone for a breathless second before hanging up herself and dialing Clark. Was he – yes – he was still in the US – she should be able to reach him – thank God she'd insisted he carry that phone even though –

"Lois?" he said.

"Gotham," she said, astonished at how high-pitched and shrill she sounded. Astonished at how little she cared. "Gotham! _He's in Gotham!_"

The line disconnected before she could tell him about the clinic, but she thought it wasn't necessary. Now he could find Jason – if it was true.

_Please, God_ -

She ran back to stand below one of the TV monitors, heart thudding, nails digging into her palms, and when it switched to breaking news from Gotham City – _"Superman has just arrived at the scene of a fire on Gotham's Park Row"_ – she felt a dizzy roar of blood in her ears.

And when, a few eternal breathless minutes later, Superman himself smiled at the cameras - smiled _at her_ - and said _"If you'll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, I have a very important delivery to make,"_ Lois gave a wordless gasp and fainted.


	10. Epilogue: Found

_She's standing on the roof when they return. _

_They descend slowly and gracefully through the glowing nighttime sky of the city, as though they're coming back from a long journey to another world, from Mt. Olympus, from heaven. _

_She's been waiting here since she picked herself up off of the floor, out of her faint, and she knows her mascara – waterproof or not – is already toast. She doesn't care. It doesn't matter.  
_

_They land on the retaining wall that runs around the roof's edge, the two people she loves most in the world, and he puts their son down and the boy runs to her, or she runs to him, or both. _

_It doesn't matter, because the important part is that she grabs hold of her baby and hugs him and laughs and cries and doesn't let go._

_His hair is too short, and his borrowed clothes don't quite fit, and he smells like smoke and sweat and unfamiliar soap, and he's crying too, and hugging her tightly enough to make her gasp with pain – but it doesn't matter._

_Jason is home._

_There's a warm strong hand on her shoulder and Lois rises, still holding on to her son, and gives his smiling father a grateful kiss. _

_"You'll never guess who Batman is," Clark says._

**--end--**

Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed! There will (happily or sadly, depending on the reader, LOL) be more fics in this series.**  
**


End file.
